A Special Offering - Experience the Kuru Dance Festival with Peter and Cecilia

Kuru Dance Festival Safari summary – African Excursions is the only tour operator that offers the opportunity for international travelers to attend the colorful Kuru Dance Festival. The 11 night/12 day personally hosted safari starts with a night at Marina's, a quaint lodge in Maun, then three days in the Okavango Panhandle area to visit basket weavers with the owner of Botswana Quality Baskets plus a visit to Tsodilo Hills and a boat cruise on the Okavango River. Then, we move on for three days in D’kar to attend the Dance Festival. The annual Kuru Dance Festival brings together dozens of Bushmen dance groups plus other traditional dance groups from varied tribes from Namibia, South Africa and all over Botswana. We then trek out to the remote Central Kalahari Game Reserve for 2 nights, a night in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park and the last night we return to Marina’s before catching an outbound flight home the following morning.

African Excursions is offering a special 9 day supplement to our Kuru Dance Festival Safari.

Below is a detailed itinerary:

Detailed itinerary:

Aug 11-Aug 22

You will leave the US  on Saturday, August 9^th (Guests are responsible for arranging for their own commercial flights)

Day 1 – Arrive Maun Airport by commercial airline where we'll be waiting for you after you clear customs. We'll be spending the night at Marina's Lodge. We love Marina's; a cozy spot with the best bar in Maun. We've spent many nights with our close friends Marina, her husband Paul and their daughter Ashley...

Day 2 – We'll start off early in the mourning to drive to the Okavango to a beautiful lodge situated on the banks of the Okavango River "Panhandle". Since it's been a good year for rain there's a chance that ephemeral Lake Ngami (the goal of Dr. Livingstone's first exploration) will have water in it and we'll stop for a short look at it's tremendous bird life. We'll arrive early afternoon with time to relax and unwind before dinner. That evening, we'll go for a relaxing boat cruise on the Okavango River where we'll enjoy sundowners and the incredible bird life.

Day 3 –Today we will be going into the center of Botswana's renown basket making communities. With expert guidance from Mma Kushonya, the owner of Botswana Quality Baskets, widely considered Botswana's premier basket weaver (link), you will get an in-depth view of how the baskets are made, and get a chance to buy baskets directly from the artisans. That evening, we'll go for another relaxing boat cruise on the Okavango River or just lounge at the lodge.

Day 4 – Today we visit Tsodilo Hills, a World Heritage site because due to the 100’s of ancient rock paintings found there. Recently the oldest known evidence of human religion was found here. We’ll be shown around the “Mountains of the Gods” by a local San Bushman guide. Tsodilo is a sacred place that gets few international tourists. In addition to the rock paintings, there are numerous caves for the adventurous to explore and nice cliff faces for rock climbing.

Day 5 –After a leisurely breakfast we’ll drive southwest across the Kalahari to the cattle farming community of Ghanzi and the heart of Botswana’s Bushmen population. Since it has been a good rainy season, we’ll stop by Lake Ngami for a quick look at this legendry lake, the destination of Livingstone’s first trip into the Kalahari and a magnet for thousands of waterbirds. We’ll be setting up camp at Dqãe Qare Game Farm where the D'Kar Trust's Kuru Dance Festival is held. In the afternoon after we arrive, if anyone is interested, we can go on a walk in the bush since Dqãe Qare is free of any dangerous animals. In the evening we’ll check out the initial dances.

Day 6 – Today will be spent at the Dance Festival. We’ll attend the opening ceremonies and watch the unique mix of Bushmen, Herero, Hambukushu, and Wayeyi dances, listen to native musical instruments, and you can try your hand at some traditional games.

Day 7 – This morning we’ll be going on a different type of bushwalk. We’ll head over to Trail Blazers, a Bushmen cultural tourism camp owned by Julian Butler, an old friend from Peter’s Peace Corps days in the ‘80’s. The Bushmen that work at Trail Blazers are from the #hoa clan, one of the last clans to give up the traditional hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Peter’s adopted grandfather and tracking mentor Xanate sometimes works at Trail Blazers and hopefully will be around. For this bushwalk, we will be accompanied by the Bushmen into the veld. They’ll show us the various edible plants they traditionally gathered and how to start a fire with hand drill. Next we’ll drive into Ghanzi to visit Gantsi Craft, the non-profit San craft store and “museum” where Cecilia used to work to see the fascinating mix of BaTswana, Herero, Bushmen, BaKgadikgadi, and Afrikaans culture that is Ghanzi. At Gantsi Craft, you can shop for Bushmen crafts and we’ll meet Namaswa, an expert ostrich eggshell jewlery maker. Namaswa will demonstration the 40,000 year old methods used to make the “pearls of the Kalahari”. We’ll lunch at the famous Kalahari Arms. Later in the afternoon we’ll head over to the Wacona cultural village for an insight into traditional Tswana culture with our host and friend Mma Tupo. We’ll then head back to Dqãe Qare for our last night in Ghanzi. Peter used to fill in for the previous manager of Dqãe Qare, and knows the San family who works there. They’ll put on a traditional braai for us, which is southern Africa’s version of a BBQ.

Day 8 – In the morning we’ll visit D’kar where Hendrik Jerling, the coordinator of the D’kar Trust which sponsor’s the Dance Festival, will show us around the Trust’s various projects. We’ll also visit the incredible Kuru Art Project and meet some of the artists and the project’s director Maude Brown. After our tour of D’kar, we head for the Central Kalahari Game Reserve the 2^nd largest game park in Africa and one the most pristine wildernesses in the world. We’ll be spending the next two days in Deception Valley, a wide undulating grassy plain of stunning beauty. From here, virtually in the middle of nowhere, the night sky will be unbelievable.

Day 9 – We have the whole day to look around the CKGR, hopefully finding a pride of its famous black-maned lions. Because the CKGR doesn’t have the number of animals as some of the other parks we’ll visit, as a result, gets a fraction of the number of visitors and with that has an unsurpassed untouched beauty.

Day 10 –After a short game drive in the morning while the camp is being packed up, we’ll drive northeast out of the CKGR to our next camp along the dry Boteti River in the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park. This is one of our favorite places where we had an incredible experience. (link). The waterholes along the Boteti River are the only water for fifty miles in any direction. This evening’s game drive will make up for the CKGR’s low density of game with thousands of wildebeest and zebra that come to drink.

Day 11 – After another drive along the river bed to see what happened overnight, we’ll drive to Maun arriving around lunch time. After lunch, we’ll stop by a few street vendors and the small roadside shop owned by Mma Kashonya who is Cecilia’s main suppler of baskets and one of country’s premier basket makers. The last night of the safari we return to Marina’s Lodge.

Day 12 – We’ll bring you to the airport and say our good byes before you catch the plane to Jo’burg and home.

The price is $4,000 per person.